Thank you for your support over the years. Good game!

[VisionofMilotic]

Any businesses you liked that no longer operate? Share the good times!

I used to go to the Borders Books Music Movies Cafe as a kid. Brick and Mortar bookstores are cool, and they had lots of book genres to choose from! I'd sit in one of their chairs reading for hours, trying to preview different titles and decide what to take home, I'd like to buy their journals to scribble my thoughts in too. As I remember the store kept a cozy, more library-like ambiance, despite being a big international chain, and their cafe made a mean blueberry scone and mocha.

I like Barnes and Nobles too, and am glad that I can still have a similar experience there today when I want, but haven't forgotten it's charming little sister store Borders. R.I.P

 

[Astinus]

First store that came to mind after reading your post was Media Play. It was a store that sold a variety of media, like books, CDs, DVDs, VHS, video games, and maybe even toys and other things. Once a month-ish, my parents and I would spend hours in one of these stores, spending money on whatever interested us. They also had chairs set up around the store so you could comfortably browse. It was always a good time and exciting to see what they had.

Amazon killed them. Which I can get, but nothing beat the fun of just wandering around and seeing what treasures you weren't even looking for popped up.

Another store that came to mind was Toys "R" Us. Though I didn't buy a whole lot here, my local store was the home of many good memories. It was where the first local Pokémon TCG League was held near me. So it's very nostalgic for a variety of personal reasons.

 

[Zeostar]

I saw the title and thought you were departing the forum, and I felt a moment of heavy sadness.

Anyways, yes, I enjoyed visiting K-Mart with my mother as a child. It was only a brief walk from my grandmothers house too. They are practically non existent now but I still remember some of the store layout in my head.

 

[bobandbill]

I saw the title and thought you were departing the forum, and I felt a moment of heavy sadness.

Anyways, yes, I enjoyed visiting K-Mart with my mother as a child. It was only a brief walk from my grandmothers house too. They are practically non existent now but I still remember some of the store layout in my head.

Haha, I can definitely see that from the thread title!

There were a few variety and game stores I recall that are long gone, which I miss. Aus still has Kmart, but I do miss how it had a good electronics section back when I was a kid - it's definitely changed significantly. That said I went often in a few previous years for cheap household goods, so I guess I still got use out of it, even with a couple downsides!

I also miss a particular brand of meat pie, Sergant's, which you could get from grocery stores. Their pies had this fantastic logo piece on the top of the pastry which was very delicious (and the rest tasted good too!). I was abroad for a few years, came back to Aus, and found out they had since shut down. That was the most notable foodstuff I've missed. Of course, I'm abroad again now so lots of stores I am used to aren't here again, so got to make new favourites.

 

[Palamon]

Borders is pretty much gone forever now. Walden Books, too. Kind of pretty sad about it. Borders was awesome... Now there's next to no American bookstores.

And, Toys R Us is no longer with us, either, rip legend. Blockbuster, too... RadioShack, Circuit City? So many stores from my childhood are just gone. =/

Other places that no longer exist: the mall I used to go to with a duck pond in the store. Red lobster is going out of business. And...K-mart, I guess?? There is one other stationary store that died that I can't seem to recall....

 

[Setsuna]

A few days ago I looked at this thread and thought "huh, that's never happened to me", but woke up today to the announcement that my favourite comic shop back home would be closing down. Apparently they got kicked out since the landlord wants to sell the entire building or something, and they couldn't find a good location to move to.
It's a massive bummer for me, because it was more like one of my favourite hangout spots rather than just another business. It's where I'd go after school every Friday to play the Pokemon TCG, we'd have everything from just casual hangout nights to smaller official tournaments to getting completely full because people came in wanting to practice for the big tournaments the night before or something. Several different friends of mine over the years have been in charge of organizing those events and I'd been volunteering at the store to help them because it felt like that thing I really wanted to do with my life at the time. I knew so many people by name, both the people who worked there and the regulars that would come in every so often. There were a lot of people I got to know when I was younger and still came back hoping I'd see them every so often years later. It was a really great space I'm happy I was able to spend so much time in, and it felt like another home for me.
I've always been really supportive of the idea of supporting your local hobby stores, things like card shops or comic shops or that sort of thing, because they feel like niche demographics but it can be super easy to meet great people you share common interests with.
Life will continue on, and they've said they'd still like to hold tournaments at another store if they can find one, and treat that as a new location of sorts. It's just... I'm sad to see it go, because there was always something so special about it to me.

 

[nl4real]

It'd be shorter to list what stores I don't remember getting wrecked by Amazon.

That said, watching Best Buy axe the DVD/Blu-Ray section last year(?) was pretty startling. I guess I'd be more affected if I still watched movies, but I hardly do anymore.

 

[VisionofMilotic]

A store going out of business soon that I'm sad about is Pullipstyle. If you are not into Pullip then the name of this shop will probably not ring a bell, but if you do collect or customize these dolls then this place was like home. Every US-based pullip lover shopped here for dolls or the supplies to make your own dolls.

It feels like the end of an era. They are the last small business pullip distributors that I know of in my country, most others had to stop years ago. I think we're down to just the official American distributor Jpgroove, and with skyrocketing retail prices I usually only shop with them when they have discounts on dented box dolls and sample sales of older dolls, not new ones.

I am bracing for customization to get harder in future without Pullipstyle. Jpgroove doesn't have mio kits (body parts to make original dolls) in stock, and second hand markets look empty too, apart from the Pullipstyle Ebay page. I made sure to order one of the few mio kits they had left before they disappear, because I don't know when the next chance will come.

 

[TwilightBlade]

• Toys R Us - I miss this store as I got some of my first stuffed animals from there. It had floor-to-ceiling walls of stuffed animals (or maybe it looked that way because I was a kiddo). I would love to experience it again now as an adult.
• Sears - This one closed in my area a few years ago. It carried just about everything non-food from clothes to household items to appliances. I actually ordered my first mattress from here when I had moved out so Sears is a sentimental department store to me.
• Blockbuster - This was an oldie, but a goldie. I rented a ton of video games from my local Blockbuster. I would rent a video game, beat it in a few days, and return it.

 

[Elite Overlord LeSabre™]

Let's start with hotel chains:



AmeriHost Inn, Signature Inn, and Wellesley Inn were three smaller, independent hotel chains that had pretty hign standards for the time. All three fell victim to corporate buyouts, and the new owners naturally decided to eliminate them to focus on their better-knoiwn, larger brands with lesser standards. Go figure.

Oldsmobile: Sister company to Buick in the General Motors portfoilo, some of their cars in the '80's were actually better than their Buick counterparts, namely the Ninety-Eight and Cutlass Supreme. Then GM couldn't figure out what to do with the brand, tried a couple of brand refreshes that failed miserably, and killed it off completely after the 2004 model year.


Right Stuf International: Probably the largest and most well known independent anime goods store, they were my source for anime goods for nearly two decades. Then of course Sony/Crunchyroll bought them out and killed the brand, because that's what you do if you're a big soulless corporation and there's a smaller independent who does a better job than you do.

Others include Borders (bookstore), Blockbuster (video rentals), K-Mart (discount retailer), and a few independent family restaurants that I used to enjoy.

 

[ReKoil]

The regional supermarket that used to be around here called Deen. They had a nice diverse assortment, and unlike the supermarket that took over was actually still affordable.
They had products you just don't really find in any other supermarkets around here. I miss the Pumpkin Pizzas